Running Home
by BrokenPoet12
Summary: Eobard reflects on why he hasn't been able to go home. Pre-series.


I don't own it.

I don't even know. I'm in love with this ship.

Enjoy.

I think this is part one. I wrote it as an email so excuse the formatting and odd spelling error.

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Every time he sees her for the first time in her timeline, he has to stop himself from telling her so many things. She reminds him of a girl he once knew that is now long dead, or driven mad, or in someone else's arms. It doesn't matter. He has lived infinite variations of time and the end result is always the same. Never mind that the destruction that has come about through his life has been by his own hand. Nothing ever changes in the end, even if the journey is different. Small, minuscule, ignore-able choices that never affect the outcome in the long run.

Except for when it comes to her.

No. When it comes to her, the future is always shifting. He has seen it. He has shaped it. He guides it. But something is always out of his reach. He lives his life in the eye of a great storm. Every possible choice swirls around him, taunting. Always taunting. And he rips and tears at the very fabric of time, reshaping and changing things until the future suits him. Changing them again on a whim.

But he is unable to change her. And each time he meets her in her timeline he falters. He has lived his life full of madness and vanity. Arrogance and contempt were all he knew or understood growing up. He was a small boy once. Stumbling, awkward, and aching to grow beyond what society had decided for him. His parents had picked him, but when he rebelled and defied their wishes, they chose another more docile son as a second attempt. Engineered to be perfect, Eobard Thawne was cast aside in favor of a brother who would never grow to be anything. Never grow because Eobard traveled back in time and murdered him to make it so. Then he murdered his parents. For their crime of fear and and his own growing contempt, he altered the timeline for the first time. It would not be the last.

When he discovered the Flash and his history, the future had never seemed to make more sense. He idolized the man in red and knew that he had finally found what he was looking for. The swirling storm just out of his reach finally calmed and his path became clear. Or so he thought.

He should have know better, really.

The first time he realized that no amount of running could alter his future the way he sought was when he found himself confronted with undeniable proof. He was destined for greatness. But he was destined to be the polar opposite of his idol. Eobard was destined to become the Flashs' greatest enemy. And it broke something in him.

He would never be what he wanted.

He would ensure that his nemesis would not be either. And through his blinding hatred and madness, he cultivated a plan. He would go back and erase the man in red from the face of the earth. Then people would finally see him. Eobard Thawne would ascend, he would become all that he knew he was destined for. Enemy or not. Good or evil. It would not matter. He would be first.

And so he ran back, into the storm and through time. It took time to find the identity of his nemesis, but he did. When he found himself on the quiet street outside of the unassuming house he could not help but laugh. This, the home of a great hero?

The madness grew in him and red lightning flashed behind his eyes. It would be nothing and he would become everything.

But then he failed and he was stranded.

Broken again, with his speed all but gone and the lightning in his veins faded, he started to plan. He would bide his time and make due in this savage society. He would mould his own future again and he would escape. He would return home. And he would try again. Revenge would come if only he could be patient. So he was. In waiting he was able to find a solution. Using one of the Flashs' own inventions from the future, Eobard had the guidance of Gideon. It took months with the mediocre technology of the time he was in, but when the AI came to life he had hope for the first time. He had guidance. He studied and he learned,

It was through Gideon that he learned about Harrison Wells and S.T.A.R. Labs and the brilliant particle accelerator that he would build with his wife beside him. So he committed two more murders and became Wells himself. Means to an end. Gideon also allowed Eobard to more fully understand the speed force and how it worked within his body. He also knew that to return to his time, he would need another speedster's power.

The irony that he would be the one to create the Flash left a sour taste in his mouth.

But he started assembling everything he would need. He assumed Harrison Wells' identity and life, focused on nothing but his end goal. Perhaps he could kill the boy along the way. So he waited and bided his time. He used his charisma and all the knowledge he could gain from Gideon to secure funding and contracts. Harrison Wells was a rising star, unstoppable. Eobard Thawne used the fame to build his facility. He had his pick from every corner of scientific facilities, universities, hospitals, and laboratories when it came time to staff. It was simple enough to pick the very best, especially when Gideon had complete access to their entire lives before they had even lived them. Everything had been thought of, everything accounted for.

And then Caitlin Snow had walked into his office for an interview.

He never even saw her coming.

The first time she meets him in person he feels like his mind is unraveling. He realizes that he has known her, that he knows her. In a moment of panic he cannot help but wonder if she is another speedster. An enemy. Perhaps sent by the Speed Force itself to stop his machinations. Or sent by the Flash. He falters long enough for her smile to slip into concern and for her to look unsure. She does not know him. But he knows her.

Intimately, he find out later.

Gideon reveals the truth to him. Even as powerful as he had become before being stranded, Eobard was not immune to being caught in the storm of time. Memories have triggered and been unlocked. He'd already been here, been stranded, allowed the accelerator to explode, and created the Flash. Over and over again. Those minuscule changes and ignore-able decisions have had consequences. He has caught himself in a loop. The one common factor is Dr. Caitlin Snow. She is the only constant he has ever had in his life.

There are infinite variations he comes to find out. She is always side by side with him, working on the accelerator. She is always watching him. She spends hours at S.T.A.R. labs with him, even after every other employee had left she is always there. The changes are minuscule, mostly. The ones that steal his breath away and feels like a punch in the gut are the timelines where Ronnie Raymond survives. Or the ones where Caitlin falls in love with the overpriced plumber. It drives Eobard mad. And even when he travels back to alter the timeline and ensure the boy dies, Caitlin is always there. Unfaltering, unswerving, loyal. She becomes a part of his identity as much as the Flash is the cause of it.

He gets the feeling that he is missing something though, because he knows for sure that he has already lived each and every moment possible. When he sits in the massive house he has obtained, on the rare nights that he is not still at the lab, he has time to reflect. Gideon has his memories from each and every single time he's been stuck here. He relieves only a few of them more than once.

So when Cailtin Snow walks into his office for the first time in her timeline he falters. Always falters. When she reaches to take his hand and shake it, he cannot help but stare where there fingers join. He remembers. He wants to tell her that he knows what her hands feel like. How many times he's felt her skin against his, her lips againt his neck, her fingers in his hair. He wants to tell her about the infinite number of time he's taken her against his desk or in his bed or in hers. How good she feels when she arches beneath him, and how when he's inside of her his entire world aligns perfectly and he can see what he is supposed to do now. What he has to do to correct his future.

He thinks he might fall in love with her. If he could love anything it would be her.

He also knows that he is going to cause her indescribable pain, unlike anything he has ever done to another person before her. And he thinks that might be why he is stuck here. Over and over. But for the first time, he is afraid. Sometimes he desperately wants the ability to speed time up so bad that he can taste blood in his mouth from his teeth biting in his lip. The rage that consumes him wars with whatever it is that Caitlin has shifted in him. He is not a good person.

But in another time, he might be one for her.

Maybe that's the point. Maybe that's what home should be. He can live with that.

Every time he has taken her hand and welcomed her to S.T.A.R. labs, Eobard has smiled and searched her eyes for a spark of recognition. It has never happened.

Except that it happens every time. When she smiles back, he can already feel it. For the first time in years he feels lighting in his blood and he knows.

He wonders if this is what it will feel like to go home. And then in the time it takes her to return his smile and blush, he wonders if he's not already there.

End

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End file.
